Pete Sampras smiles at Switzerland's Roger Federer - AP Photo/Vincent Thian
Two of the greatest tennis players of all time have one major blimp on their resumes: Sampras never won the French Open, and neither has Roger Federer. The Fed-express may well change that come Sunday night, but isn’t it remarkable that a court surface can alter things so much.
Federer can handle the top spin of Nadal on a grass court or hard court, but throw in some Roland Garros clay (as opposed to German clay) with the Spaniard at the other end and Federer looks all at sea.
If anyone’s seen Samantha Stosur play in this tournament, they’ll know how impressive her serving has been. Commentators started labelling her the best server in the women’s game. Wally Masur even said she was “doing a Nadal” with her kick serves.
But hang on a minute. She’s always been a good server. I think it’s just the variable of the clay that’s working best for her right now.
When she goes to Wimbledon, she won’t get the same amount of grip and spin, and will have to flatten the serve out. And that’s what I love about professional tennis.
You have to constantly change to suit the ground beneath you.
Players go from the hard court season, to clay, and automatically have to start sliding around. Then, within a week, they’re on grass preparing for Wimbledon.
That’s why it’s even harder to win the calendar Grand Slam now than it was in the past (pre-1980s) when three of the four tournaments were played on grass.
For the record, only two men (Don Budge and Rod Laver – twice) and three women (Maureen Connolly Brinker, Margaret Court and Steffi Graf) have won all four grand slams in a calendar year.
Pete Sampras did make the semi-final of the French in 1996, but he also lost eight times in the first or second round in his thirteen appearances.
One has to ask the question, why?
Yes, his game was built around a big serve, and you don’t get value for it on the slower clay courts. But his groundstrokes were as good as any.
The fact that he did lose so many times in the early rounds, hands the advantage over to Federer, who is clearly the most consistent player on all surfaces since Laver, having now made his twentieth straight Grand Slam semi-final.
Federer will probably win the French Open, and knowing the tennis gods, will lose in the earlier rounds at Wimbledon.
You just can’t predict it.
Just ask Rafael Nadal, defeated by a red hot Robin Soderling, who played perfect clay court tennis, which was lucky, because he would never have won if he played Wagga-style, synthetic grass tennis.
Completely different games!
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